'Spooks' C/D

i like the way the blonde girl/asian dude "romance" is taking a whole series to ignite, while a main character can be killed after about five episodes.

Considering they got rid of the original three main leads, I doubt it. This series is awful however, that Zaf guy's smirk make me want to hurt him and the whole Adam/Fiona thing is vomit-worthy. The son and their homelife was so brought in to milk more sympathy out of her getting shot. I mean, if you don't want to run the undue risk of orphaning your kid, GIVE UP THE FUCKING SECRET SERVICE, MORONS!! Also, she is not hott. Adam Carter however, K-ROWR...

http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/36/62/38m.jpg

And that "failed freelance journalist turns crap spy" storyline... BRING BACK DANNY (even though he's dead).

First two series were excellent, however.

the journo storyline is just pure roffles though, yeah.

That was quite entertaining. I actually did laugh out loud at the bad guy shiting himself whilst striking a half-hearted martial arts pose when confronted with Zaf + baseball bat at the detention centre. ALso hurrah for Zaf's action lunge for the sprinkler system --> Adam in wet shirt, rowr. Obv, serious political comment and stuff too, right?

If someone who isn't blonde and attractive helps Adam out of a fix, does he recruit them? Or is just the ones he fancies that get in?

where do you go from there, though? could not the whole series be about this, building up to a final confrontation? british tv drama is no good at slow builds at the moment, cf 'doctor who'.

I take it this was filmed before the current aeroplane bomb threat? Last season's "bombs on London Transport" was apparently filmed before 7/7 and transmitted shortly afterwards. They're remarkably prescient, unless there's someone on the Spooks scripting team leaking stuff to the real spooks and giving people ideas.

including 'web 2.0'.

there were no joeks along the lines of 'lol bloggers leave house omg' :(

The "bloggers have motivated the country, spamming all mobiles and computers" thing was a bit cringing. If you got spam from some twats calling conspiracy, you'd ignore it, wouldn't you?

last two seasons have been awesome. even better without the posh dude.

Anyone still watching? It's hard to believe this used to be imo one of the best BBC series on TV (Series 1 to maybe 3, I can't remember). I'll still watch it whatever but it's a complete parody and none of the storylines are as smart as they used to be. There's always one massive gaping plot hole in every episode - at least in earlier series they seemed to give a shit about disguising them or making up some secret special M15 reason why they were doing the ridiculous things they were doing.

My o/h predicted word for word the "And [possible spoiler]?... good to have you back" line :(

OTM re. ridiculous downward trajectory of quality. That episode where Malcolm talked the assassin out of killing Ruth's kid by submerging all and sundry in an avalanche of cute (then retired to be replaced by a foetus)...

Although, I am glad Malcolm got to retire rather than be beheaded or something. One of the last great characters..?
I swear the new guy said something like 'I'm hacking into the mainframe'.

haha, OK, laughing at death of main character = I officially don't give a shit about this any more.

This episode was promising! Some lovely Harry & Ruth stuff Jane Austen style.
Also: MP expenses jibe! Knife crime! Coalition! topical.

Lucas/John(?) lives at number 42 ohhh.

first two eps of this were str8 fiya, no shame

Tariq's supercomputer skillz are hilarious "I'm triangulating a logarithmic approximation of his trajectory from St Pancras" *taps keyboard* "oh look, there he is in Trafalgar Square surrounded by no people at all and staring at a CCTV camera in exactly a pose that will let my database of everyone in the world recognise him in half a second" LET'S GO PEOPLE!

Harry & Ruth story is wuvly though. Do not give a shit about Lucas back story, also in an attempt to be more like 24, they appear to be aping the CTU pre-employment screening methods.

Also new Home Secretary is good, also OMG THEY PWNED THE WHOLE OF RUSSIA.

Still pish, with about a minute to go I was all "how are they going to shoehorn in crap girlfriend + shady bloke" and OH LOOK there they are together. Thought Demetri was going to bite it tonight, since someone thoughtfully explained his entire backstory halfway through the series when all he's done is twat about being rubbish like Zaf or Ben from the last couple of years.

Also, dear BBC, it's not spelled STANSTEAD.

Oh, and new Home Secretary is not good at all ("hi dere Harry, I'm just downloading the Home Office app for my iPhone" aargghh cringe), and he looks like Charlie Slater off EastEnders. And when they have their briefings, they just appear to be explaining things they already know to each other in case we can't follow what's going on.

I know no-one else watches this. I just needed to vent.

This was going ok until you question WHY the girl needed any of that sniper nonsense!?

when they have their briefings, they just appear to be explaining things they already know to each other in case we can't follow what's going on.

Yeah, why do you need to move the President, ffs, you're going to be in the room with him anyway! That was kind of stupid, but for a programme that has previously defused bombs by (1) melting them with a cigarette lighter and (2) putting them in the microwave, I'm beyond even pretending to have any belief to suspend any more. Except for bombs when they need to lose a major cast member, they can't sort them out in time.

putting them in the microwave

that could work? would instantly fry all electronics.

hmmm, I suppose. It's still silly though.

"initialiasation"

I actually loved the end of this one.

Yay Malcolm! I don't quite buy WHY Lucas has gone so bad (it's not surely for this Maya bird who he totally forgot about for the last three series when he was all over that baddie with the rubbish American accent?).

I would love to have Ruth's Ruthipedia brain though. Squints at blurry photo on iPhone "oh, that's foreignmanspooky mcspook, he's [reels off entire CV from memory]". She's so dead by the end of the series. Her or Demetri.

Beth is rubbish. She's like Jo with even fewer dimensions.

i can't understand emotionally what's going on at all on this show now, the cast has turned over so much. like, who are all these people? why are they trying to save or stop whatever they're trying to save or stop? remember at the beginning when the one girl and the one dude had, like, minor personal lives that didn't involve massive secret espionage backstories that started in on their second ten minutes onscreen? and i've SEEN all of them, so technically i DO know what's going on now, it's just… the britain on tv sure seems like it's bound to blow up any day now, what with the terrible working conditions its pretend secret agents have to put up with.

Saw a bit of an old one on Dave or Watch or Gold or something last night. Totally forgot that Andy Serkis (Gollum!) once played a rock star in this.

I watched an old one a couple of weeks ago as well from the Tom/Zoe/Danny days, made me well nostalgic for the days when it just was about spookery and not about emo triple agents.

this last ep was fucking EPIC imo

the palestine one was shit tho and another recent one was super-depressing

yeah no idea what's so amazing about this girl of lucas's, and tbh not that interested in his backstory

Finally got round to watching Monday's episode. Yay Malcolm indeed!

It is pretty pants on the whole these days, but I still enjoy it. I do miss the stories about their personal lives, the scenes in their flats. I can't actually remember when the writers stopped giving a toss about their personal lives. No way would you see Beth or Dimitri's partner making a tomato ketchup sandwich.

I do miss the stories about their personal lives, the scenes in their flats.

god i don't

think this series is revealing lucas's limitations as an actor tho

Ach, I don't know, Tom with Mrs BT ad who didn't know he was a spook and didn't like it when she found out he was - that was how to do their home lives. Coming home from a hard day defending the UK to make some toast and read the kids a bedtime story.

Has Ruth entirely forgotten that her husband got splatted in the line of duty (sanctioned by Harry, iirc)? What happened to the kid that Malcolm saved through cuetness again? Perhaps this will all be remembered now that Malcolm's back?

i totally forgot that ruth had a husband.

yeah i don't remember much about earlier seasons. it's not like '24'. the last three have crushed it though.

Much as I love Ruth, I hate that they let her come back with no explanation. She had to flee the UK because of something or other, stay away forever, oh but apparently if they need someone to speak Cantonese then all that's forgotten and she can swan around just fine?

The Tom/Zoe/Danny days were absolute classic.

Don't know if it was a husband, but he was definitely shot in their back garden - that was just in the last series!

Ruth had faked her own death to leave, but her return from the dead came not long after Ros was similarly resurrected from the dead (during her own funeral!) to similar lack of fanfare. I suspect there are whole tons of sharks that have been jumped since the Tom/Zoe/Danny days.

Danny's death was absolutely brilliant, when a Spooks death was an Event rather than a twice-yearly plot device.

Oh look, Ruth didn't forget her blokey and kiddo after all. What do you reckon Ruth's emotional blankness is leading up to her copping a bullet for Harry next week?

Also, God, this Lucas/John/Vaughan/Maya stuff is excruciatingly unbelievable. Stop it!

Next season I want it just to be Demetri and Tariq and Harry actioning, techying and pontificating respectively. And that's it. Back to basics.

How did Lucas know where Vaughn was keeping Footballer's Wife? He was intending to get it out of him with that knife-in-leg stunt but then Beth showed up and he couldn't follow him. Iirc Vaughn had just said she was in a/the safe house.

Every time the Vaugn character called Lucas "John" in that ever-so-pointed manner, it reminds me of Alan Partridge talking about the Elephant Man in a dress: "You look nice.... John".

Oh, none of it makes sense. It's all shit, like a soap opera where you don't even actually care about the characters (except Ruth and Harry, even though Harry fucking killed the ex-Home Secretary a few weeks ago!)

ok that was a TERRIBLE episode, maybe the worst of all time

still enjoyed the one preceding it

also lol at lucas's exit line 'lucas north is no more' then immediately on 'next week' we have ruth screaming 'lucas!'

wd have preferred it if he'd fucked off

Ha, my mum and dad missed it on Monday and my mum asked me to email a summary of what happened for them before they watch the finale next week. I was very tempted to just type "GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" as a summary. The actual email contains a quite disproportional amount of "for some reason" and "not even sure if this is relevant" guff. Even trying to write it all down you realise how rubbish it really is. I did explain that the entire Lucas/John thing was told in flashback twice in two different ways, so it might even not have happened as explained.

See you all back here at 10 on Monday for a proper good moan then?

"for some reason"

oh, so it was, like, a dream episode?

Just not a very well explained one. "For some reason" might equally be "for no reason at all".

Well, that was a load of old pish. Where's this sober-up-in-a-flash-get-up-to-speed-on-everything-in-two-minutes dude been for the last 8 fucking years? And they did all this for a non-existent thing?

lol at the briefcase swap/drop being done in the middle of the day out in the open right next to one of London's major tourist attractions.

Still, at least someone's noticed that Harry's recruitment policy's not the best. Investigation, eh?

When it suddenly cut to bomb-from-nowhere-cam I thought I was watching a different episode all of a sudden. I did think for a minute it might be Harry's turn to go but I'm sure the crazed gunman turning the gun on himself has been done to death recently.

wow that was bad

not quite as bad as the one before it

but still bad

whole lucas plotline sank this series

Beth! look out *sniff* it's [some stun gas or other]. It'll knock us out. Let's, um, run right into the cloud of it!

btw, that's twice in three weeks Demetri's recognised something from smell alone. Is that what they teach you in, er, wherever the hell they found him? Scratch'n'sniff school?

I actually thought the last episode was pretty good, even though it was obvious Lucas/John wasn't going to shoot Harry, and that the only surprise was that he jumped instead of shooting himself.

a big failure of the season was the failure to give the blonde actress some kind of character after her first couple eps

This series is good so far! I mean, obviously, seeing as last series was so bad.

They killed Tariq! Who else is going to triangulate their mainframes and intercept their encryptions now? That Calum twat? Seriously, wtf, getting a job in Section D is some sort of suicide mission. Do the other sections lose staff with such monotonous regularity? Still, only four more episodes and I can give up on this whole sorry farrago for good.

Erin seems a decent addition to the team, a spy with a conscience rather a robo-Roz type. But way too late for this kind of thing, and she'll be dead by the end of next week, probably.

This is one of those shows that made me obsessive.

Can we just talk about how HILAAARRRIOUS the American accents are? Please?? First of all they think everyone is Southern, or I should say, everyone is Southern at strange moments, apparently as the spirit moves them. THEN they say things like "go off someone." NO STOP SHE'S A SECRET MI6 AGENT POSING AS AN AME--wait, she actually is...oh shit.

You guys are just terrible at this aren't you.